Miley Cyrus rocks Skidmore syllabus

Twerking pop star is focus of sociologist's look at gender, media

Paul Grondah, Times Union

By Paul Grondahl

Updated 9:34 pm, Thursday, March 27, 2014

FILE - This Dec. 13, 2013 file photo shows Miley Cyrus at the Z100's Jingle Ball in New York. Police say an 18-year-old Miley Cyrus fan sneaked into her dressing room a day before her Omaha concert and left a note pleading her to meet him. Omaha television station KETV says police reported that the man, Tucker Salvesen, entered a restricted area of the CenturyLink Center on Wednesday, March 5, 2014. Police say Salvesen's note pledged his love to Cyrus and said her music gave him all the answers he was looking for to mend his broken heart. Salvesen was detained the day of the concert in a public area at the CenturyLink Center and cited on suspicion of trespassing. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) ORG XMIT: NYET106

There are thousands of courses taught at a dozen colleges and universities across the Capital Region, but none is getting the buzz of "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media," which will be offered this summer at Skidmore College.

The tongue-lolling, serial-twerking, scantily clad 21-year-old pop star and pop culture provocateur is sure to set the curriculum topsy-turvy with a flurry of viral media attention.

The exegesis of all things Miley is a pedagogical P.R. bonanza for Skidmore. An Associated Press story went national and by Thursday it had been picked up by Buzzfeed, ABC News, Time, CNN, Elle, Fox, Newsday, the New Daily News and Australia's Sydney Morning World.

The 200-level special topics course will be taught starting May 27 by visiting assistant professor Carolyn Chernoff, who has been interviewed by bloggers and reporters between Saratoga and Sweden. A member of the Skidmore faculty since last fall, Chernoff is an urban and cultural sociologist who investigates issues of inequality and social transformation. She's taught at several colleges and is a co-founder of The Girls' DJ Collective. Her Skidmore website photo features aggressively swooping hipster glasses.

Chernoff touched off a far-flung media frenzy by posting a tweet of the course description around campus. She created the class as "a creative and rigorous way to look at what's relevant about sociology and sociological theory," according to a Skidmore press release. Chernoff was not available for comment Thursday.

The seed was planted in an upper-level class on youth culture she taught last year. She showed a clip of the sexually suggestive performance with Cyrus and Robin Thicke last year at the 2013 MTV Music Video Awards to Thicke's hit song, "Blurred Lines." Cyrus wore flesh-toned lingerie and "twerked" for Thicke, slang for a hip-thrusting, groin-grinding, low-squatting display of stereotyped femme fatale sexuality of the sort practiced at strip clubs.

Chernoff said her students joined the discussion and "were able to deconstruct a lot of what they saw" and found in Cyrus's performance issues of race, class, gender and power. The video dominated social media and talk radio for weeks.

Chernoff presented a sketch of the Miley Cyrus course in January at the Women's Center at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., to a standing-room-only audience.